Family Affair
by AnnHoj
Summary: Can the new found relationship between Greg and Sara survive a trip across the country and Grissom finding out the one thing she wished to keep so secret from him?
1. A Wasted Life

Okay, here it goes...the sequel to Kryptonite. I wouldhave like to get this up earlier, but it's rather annoying how school work always gets in the way of things. This first chapter is more of arecap of the Sara/Greg stufffrom the previous storyfrom Grissoms' point of view. I definitely recommend reading the first one before continuing with this second one, you might notunderstand everything if you don't. Enough with those pesky disclaimers...y'all know I obviously have nothing to do with the people who actually own CSI, so just go ahead and start reading.

Chapter One- A Wasted Life

_She was unlike any other woman I had ever met. She was so beautiful in her own ways, both inside and out. Whether she had black smudges of grease on her face from working underneath a suspect's car, or she had dark circles under her deep brown eyes from staying up half the night working on her latest case and four hours before shift is to start taking a quick rest on the couch in the break room, she was still picturesque. It was a natural beauty about her, like she never tried to look a certain way and was no one but herself no matter what the situation was. She looked just as exquisite dressed in a blue forensics jumpsuit and safety glasses as in a black dress and pearls on the rare occasion she needed to dress up. The funny thing was I doubt anyone had ever told how beautiful she was, or if they did, she didn't believe it._

_She was a smart woman, a respectable woman. She had wisdom beyond her years and the maturity of a woman my age trapped in the body of a much younger woman. Seeing her as one of my past students, she had come so far, accomplished so much to get where she was. She was a true fighter, knowing what tragedy her life once was like. _

_The men in her past hadn't helped her much either. They took for granted how great of a woman she was. They didn't give her all that she reallydeserved. They only hurt her. They had each taken a tiny piece of her and only left scars behind when they walked out of her life. From how she dealt with some of her cases, there was a good chance some of them had taken more away from her than others, but she would never talk about it._

_In some ways, I could be considered one of those men. Though in this case, she was the one to do the walking, but it's all the same because I never once tried to stop her. I turned her down every time she brought up the idea of going to dinner, claiming that whatever was going on between us would never work. I was her superior, her teacher, and couldn't, wouldn't,risk everything I had worked for to be with her. I made her think as if mycareer was worth more than she ever would be to me, when that was the farthest thing from what I really felt._

_"I wish I was like you Grissom, I wish I didn't feel anything." She couldn't have been more right. She spilled everything to me. She trusted me. She had told me what she had never told anyone else before; why she was always so angry, thinking I would be there to comfort her, but I just couldn't, not the way he could._

_Through all these years, I had let my job consume me. I let it consume me so much that I had detached myself from the reality of the kind of things I saw everyday. Getting involved emotionally impaired one's judgment. It forced you to feel ways you don't want to feel. She was a perfect example of what that emotional involvement was. She was an emotional roller coaster, more ups and downs than any I had ever dared to try. It would make you go crazy. Then when you got so good at controlling your feelings, you couldn't tell the difference between your cases and whatwas going on with people whowere a big part of your life. You build up walls to keep yourself from succumbing to the sadness, the anger, and more importantly becoming one of them. Then you begin to realize, you're whole master plan has backfired and you're just as emotionless as the ones who do the things that bring me to work everyday._

_I knew I could feel something, what to call it, I didn't know. I felt something for her, but I could never tell her. I couldn't think of the right words, and even when I did, they managed to get completely lost on their way out of me. I sent her a plant and all I could think off to write in the card was "from Grissom", not even "love Grissom". How awful was that? I did know how she felt about me, she found away to get her words out, but what did I do? I told her I didn't know what to do about it. I could solve cases, but when it pertained to my own life, I had my head so far down the microscope I had know idea what to do._

_"...when you finally figure it out, you might be too late." Those very words echoed in mind ever since she first said them before walking away from me. I had really messed up. I was too late and I was losing her._

_She made me feel so young. I could see so much life in her. I felt as if some of that youthfulness was in some way passed on to me when I was in her presence, but he was a younger man. I was two decades older,more thantwenty pounds heavier, and had a head full of rapidly disappearing gray hair. He had the rest of his life to spend by her side. He had more years to offer her, even though he had lived twice as much as I ever did in my fifty years. He had more life left in him. What would she ever want with me, an old man?_

_From a supervisor's view,the two madea good team. Most of the time two people having a relationship would get between their work, but not with them. They wrapped up some of the toughest cases so quickly. He had just started working out on the field and she had already taught him so many things about the job. He, in turn, helpedher see that there was more to life than work, Court Tv, and listening to police scanners. I once said that if she didn't find a diversion from work she would burn herself out, and she was for a while. He saved her. He was her diversion._

_She was happy with him, happier than I had ever seen her with another person. It showed as they stood near one another in the layout room processing evidence, a slight brush of skin as she reached across him for another evidence bag. He whispered something softly in her ear and she smiled, the gap between her two front pearly whites not stopping her. She glowed whenever she was in his presence. I noticed._

_She was even singing again, something she only did when she was wrapping up a case, most likely one of those that drove her crazy. Now on the off chance I worked a case with the two of them, she would softly sing while surrounded by clouds of fingerprint powder recovering evidence. She had a stunning voice, but she would hate if anyone told her so. She never did take compliments well._

_I could count on one hand how many times I had heard her laugh before he came into view. He would try anything to make her smile, no matter how stupid it made him look. Originally, she never went for his silly antics and shot him down every time he asked, much like I did to her. Since then he'd changed into someone more serious, more professional, but he still could make her laugh in a way like no other._

_He made her his coffee, his special reserved stash of the best coffee in all of Hawaii. He never shared it with anyone else, not even me. That had to mean something. Or if it wasn't his coffee in the break room, she would take him up on his offers to go to the quiet diner down the street for a cup of coffee and a vegetarian omelet during their mutual break._

_He brought much needed warmth to this so-called ice woman. He was her shoulder on which she could cry, something she rarely let anyone see her do. He was always there when ever she needed him, her safety net to catch her when she fell. He was good for her. She had a rough life full of secrets. Perhaps he was the better choice in which to confide. He knew all the right words to say to make things seem okay, when I had failed miserably before trying to do the same. He rocked her to sleep cradling her in his arms when she woke up trembling from the nightmares of her past and wiped away the tears from her deep brown eyes. I could never be there for her like he could._


	2. The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

A chapter full of Sandle fluffiness, I hope you like it. This Chapter's pretty long compared to the others, but I don't think I'll be updating for a few more days, so it'll make up for it...hopefully.

Chapter Two- The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

"Do you realize we've been together for about a month, and we've never gone anywhere?" Sara slid out from underneath the car warranted from the latest case's suspect parked in the lab's garage after hearing Greg's voice. "And do you realize you have a huge black grease smudge on your face? I mean, not that I consider that in the least bit a turnoff." He stood above her, his blue jumpsuit incredibly spotless.

"I've got red trace fibers matching the vic's coat and blood on the undercarriage. Anything inside the car?" She dodged the question.

"Bloodstains in the backseat."

"You want to call it?"

"Okay, so the Mrs. comes home late at night and finds Mr. Harper with another woman. The other woman hightails it out of there. The two start fighting, yelling, then she threatens to leave him. She goes to pull the car out of the garage, but he follows her wanting to apologize. But she's pretty ticked off. She backs out of the garage and hits something and keeps going, whether she meant to out not, I don't know. She stops to see what it was. She picks him up, puts him in the backseat, and drives out to the desert to dump him."

"Sounds right, now we just have to get this stuff to the lab to prove it." She said heading towards the door.

"Why won't you talk about us at work?"

"Because if Ecklie gets word of what's going on with us, things could really change around here." She stopped in the doorway andmoved back over to him.

"You sound like we're dealing with CIA operations here."

"Well, what do you mean by never gone anywhere? What happened to taking things slow?"

"I mean, going out on dates, to dinner, anything but stay home for take out and a rented movie. It's almost as if you don't want to be seen with me." To Sara, he started to sound angry, uncharacteristically angry for a guy like Greg.

"No, no it's nothing like that, Greg."

"Yes it is. You don't want Gil to know about this."

"I've gotten over all of that, given him his chances. I'm done okay?" Her tone became suddenly softer. "Let's see...tomorrow I have court, so dinner the night after that at a nice restaurant full of people. How does that sound?"

"And dancing?"

"Dancing? No, no I don't dance. Never. You should know that!"

"Come on." He leaned closer andwiped the dirt from her cheek. "Don't worry...there'll be no public humiliation involved."

"We'll see."

* * *

Defense lawyers, pantyhose, and heels, three reasons Sara hated the other side of her profession. She hated to look 'professional' and trials were always during the day when she'd normally be sleeping, but not that she ever gotthat much sleep anyway. Even worse was the fact that it was the Robinson case that had brought her there. 

She didn't know what was going to happen in the end. How can you affectively convince a jury to give the death penalty to a housewife who murdered her abusive husband and the plumber accomplice who killed her ten year old daughter? Even she didn't know what the verdict should be. Usually she was desperate to get the 'bad guy' put away after seeing all that he or she did, but this time it was different. She was more emotionally involved with the murderer not the victim. What was the world coming to? That wasnot how it was supposed to work.

So she did like she would any night, dish up herself a big bowl of ice cream and plan to watch hour after hour of Court Tv until her eyelids felt so heavy that she can't even walk to her room and end up waking on the couch the next morning. She was just heading to the freezer when she was startled by a ring of the doorbell.

"Just a second!" She yelled setting the barely touched mint chocolate chip down on the counter.

She ran over to open the door, but when she did there was no one there, not at the door nor anywhere down the hallway, only a white box lying in the doorway. She bent down to pick it up seeing therewas folded note lying on top.

_Surprise Sara! First, open this box. (Do this now. If I go on it'll spoil the surprise of what's inside.) Then refer to the next note you'll find inside._

She lifted the top off the box to find a beautiful deep red silk dress that must have cost him a fortune. There was yet another note under the dress.

_I hope it's your size...and that you actually like it. You know I'm not good with these kinds of things. Anyway, put this on and I'll be upstairs in an hour to pick you up. You'll find out where we're going later._

Now it was a good thing she wasn't like a lot of women or he'd be waiting for a while because of his hour allowance for to get herself made up. After taking a quick shower, she stood in front of the mirror contemplating what to do. Times like this came up so rarely. She brushed through her hair and twisted it up with a one of the unused wooden chopsticks from the last time she and Greg had ordered takeout. Next was make up…and oh how she hated the stuff. But this was her first official public date with Greg, she wanted to do this right. So she smudged on some eye shadow and a bit of lipstick.

On to the dress now. She had to admit, despite Greg's personal taste in clothing, she loved the dress he bought. Red, the color was a bit daring for her. She might have picked the same dress in black, a bit more understated. It didn't seem like something a guy would choose. It wasn't skin tight and thigh high like she would have pictured, but he knew very well a dress like that would be well out of her comfort zone. She guessed he had some help choosing, but it was even the right size, something men always failed to understand.

She had just spent the whole day yesterday in heels and now she found herself slipping her feet into another pair of black spiked things. But she didn't think it was fitting to wear her chunky black shoes for work with such a sophisticated dress.

Stumbling across her bedroom carpet, she tried to regain her land legs over to her jewelry box, one very empty jewelry box. She seldom wore the kind of stuff nice enough to be put in a jewelry box. She was always afraid of breaking expensive things at work digging through garbage or what not on a daily basis. She pulled out a small string of pearls and fastened them around her neck. The only reason she owned them was because they were a gift from her foster mother when she got her acceptance letter from Harvard.

Now all she had to do was sit and wait for Greg to come to the door and she had twenty minutes to wait until then. Fifteen really, but he was naturally five minutes behind schedule anyway and she had just gotten used to it. She sat down on the couch, propped her already aching feet on the coffee table, and grabbed the latest _Journal of Forensic Science_ that had just come in the mail the day before.

It was pretty pathetic, but this was her first night out in months, more like years. Ever since she left Hank she hadn't found anyone else, until that bathtub overflowed. She couldn't have been so happy for that one stupid mistake. If it hadn't been for that, she doubted anything would have really happened between Greg and herself.

Then there was a knock at the door. She knew very well that it had to be Greg. For some odd reason he never used the doorbell,except for earlier today. She bounded off the couch and ran to the door, well as fast as one wearing heels could run. She made it to the door in record time, minus a few minutes for a few 'ow's to slip out of her mouth. She paused for one second more to pull herself together before opening the door.

"You're early!" She said welcoming him in.

He turned his arm quickly to check his watch as he stepped through the doorway into the kitchen. "I'm right on time."

"Yes and you're usually late, so you're earlier than I expected." She noticed she still couldn't help but say the most stupid comments when she was around him. He was the only person who could manage to make a woman like Sara do that."Thank you so much."

"So, I take that you like it. I wasn't so sure, you know, I'm not as great when it comes to women as I let on to Nick and Warrick." He let out a laugh. He didn't have to tell that. She had already figured that out for herself, but she didn't care either way.

"Well, you're looking pretty good yourself." She stepped back to take a look. He wasn't dressed in his ridiculously loud print shirts that he was once known for throughout the lab. He had retired them after he started doing fieldwork, but it still appeared as if he raided Nick's closet. He was wearing a nice blue striped shirt; the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of dark trousers. He was even wearing a tie, a red one the same color as her dress. The only thing that didn't look like Nick was the old tweed cap perched upon his head of, believe it or not, not so purposely messy hair, much like when she first met him five years ago.

"You finally decided to only leave that big tub of stuff on the bathroom sink for good, not evil."

"_It's dangerous; you could poke an eye out_." He mocked Sara at what she had said about it a while back.

"No wonder you're on time."

"Well, we won't be for our reservations if we don't get going." He smiled, trying not to make her feel rushed. She grabbed a light jacket and her handbag, and the two disappeared down the hallway.

* * *

"Sorry I have no nice car to pick you up in..." He apologized opening her door. 

"No, by all means, I love your Jetta. My Denali's just big, black, and boring, but the department pays so I shouldn't complain."

"Well, my driver for the Mercedes was busy, you know." He said jokingly of course. "Why do you look so nervous? It's just me…Greg. The same guy you stayed with for a week until you found your place upstairs. Remember?"

"Yes, I'm plenty aware of that. It's just...I didn't mean to sound like I didn't want to be seen with you. I didn't want people to think we can't keep working together. And you know very well that Ecklie isn't a big fan of mine."

"Sara, don't worry. What he doesn't know won't hurt us. And you know Cath and the guys wouldn't say anything if they found out." He reassuringly patted her shoulder with his free hand. "Now, no more talking about work."

"You still haven't told me where we're going."

"We're almost there."

* * *

"Oh, Greg! This place is really expensive. Are you sure you can afford this?...I can pay for my half." 

Greg laughed. "No, I've been waiting five years to take you here; I'm going to do things right."

The two followed their waiter to their special reserved table for two. Greg moved over to pull out Sara's chair, but she did it herself before he had a chance.

"You don't need to go all gentlemanly on me...Hello, since when do you wear a tie?" She leaned over across the table to pull off his tie assuming it was only a clip on. Greg's body moved with it knocking over a glass of water and just missing the candle in the center of the table. She scrambled to get her napkin from her lap to soak it up.

"Ow...what are you doing, trying to hang me and give Ecklie a crime scene to prove this date almost happened? Then it wouldn't matter if he knew, we'd both be out of a job anyway."

"I'm so sorry. I thought you didn't know how to tie a tie. I've only seen you wear one once."

Greg rubbed his neck and loosened the knot before Sara starts cracking up.

"What is so funny?"

"Didn't we talk about this before? You know, being ourselves. Who do we have to impress, not each other! We've seen each other at our very worst, so what's the point anymore? You in a tie and me wearing the most painful pair of heels two days in a row, come on. Who are we kidding?"

Greg nodded in agreement and stopped loosening his tie, taking it off all together. "Oh god, that feels so much better. I was starting to feel too much like my grandfather." He folded it and hid it away in his jacket pocket. "Okay, off with the shoes." He grinned.

"No...You're kidding. Not in this place."

"Why not? You're sitting at a table, you won't be getting up. Why would it matter, no one is going to look under the table and stare at your bare feet. Plus, working on blistered toes is not fun."

"No mentioning work...or your feet for that matter." She hesitated for a moment. "Okay, I will be barefoot in 4...3...2...1. You happy?"

"Come to think of it, in some countries it's inappropriate to show your feet unless you're married or something."

"Oh that makes things so much better."

"Hey, I read it somewhere."

"State your source...one of those magazines you hid from Grissom in big books in the lab."

"I don't have anything like that. You might want to check with Nick, that stuff is so…Can we just drop this now?" There was no way he could get out of this. She just loved to get him verbally backed into a corner. Maybe it was mean to watch him stammer and trip over his own words, but it always seemed so easy to do.

Looking back on things, Greg was the only man she was really friends with before considering their relationship as more than that. Greg was a nice guy; he said all the right things to make her feel like everything was going to be okay. But that was how every guy she was with before was like to begin with, even Hank. Though she knew Greg would never become like one of them. He was just different.

He waved his hands in front of her face. "Earth to space cadet Sidle." She jumped from her thoughts and back to reality. "You okay?" She nodded and smiled back to him. She was more okay than ever. For once she could actually say she was happy.

A few more minutes of small conversation and their dinner arrived at their table. Italian restaurant, the best Italian restaurant in all of Vegas, so they both had ordered pasta dishes, Sara's, the vegetarian special.

"This explains my first dinner at your place."

"Yeah, but our waiter can actually light candles."

"I still liked the guy at _Chef Greger's_. But then again, I don't hear anyone singing old Sinatra songs in here."

Sara started to eat her spaghetti, but then stopped. "How did you learn to cook?"

"Nana Pernilla, but that wasn't her secret sauce. That takes four hours to make and I didn't want to make her mad…See it wouldn't be the same without meat and Nana would be disappointed if I changed her recipe."

"Well Prego's better than what I could do."

* * *

"Could I get you a take out box, Sir?" The waiter asked a very stuffed Greg. He wanted to do as Papa Olaf was known to do after Christmas dinner, undo his top button and burp loudly, but this wasn't the right occasion for that. 

"Yes." He answered looking down at his plate, only a bit more than half missing. Sara, on the other hand, had eaten every last bit. "How can you eat more that me? Where does it all go?"

He snatched the bill off the table before Sara's fingers could reach. He pulled out his wallet and left the money on the table.

"Got your shoes on? Then let's go."

"You don't feel like going home yet, do you?" He asked walking to theVolkswagen in the middle of the parking lot.

She shook her head. "What do you have in mind?"

Instead of answering her question, he scooped her up in his arms off her feet and carries her the last few yards to the car.

"What the hell are you doing? Put me down!" She shrieked with an agitated tone in her voice. Greg had to admit, Sara was not a woman to make angry, so he quickly planted her feet down on the pavement in front of her door.

"Take your shoes off and keep them off. Where we're going it won't matter."

* * *

"What are we doing at Lake Mead?" She demanded to know as Greg lead her blindly with a hand over her eyes away from where the car was parked. 

"How do you know where we are?"

"I'm not deaf, and where else would you hear frogs in Las Vegas? It's not like there's an over abundance of water anywhere else around here."

"Now you ruined it."

"Ruined what?"

He sighed and took his hand away from her eyes. "My favorite place in all of Las Vegas. Well, it looks better at sunrise." It looked a lot different late at night after everyone and their jet skis that disturbed it all had left. She had seen it before, but of course she was here for work, so she couldn't stop and take it all in.

"It's so peaceful...so not you. I would've thought the French Palace would be your favorite." Greg never seemed to her as a nature kind of guy, unless it had to do with the beach. His hair was enough to prove that. They had both grown up in California, but so far apart that they were completely different.

"I haven't been there in years. I come here after shift a lot, it takes the edge off things. I just sit down on the bank or put my feet in the water and everything goes away. I mean, after being around dead bodies all day I need some way to get away from it and you of all people should try it."

"What are we supposed to do here at eleven o'clock at night? The sun's gone down and we've got hours until sunrise."

He left her standing perched on the slight bank to walk back to the car and bring back a small radio. "If you remember correctly, I wanted to go dancing, but you don't like to dance in front of people." He guided her by the hand along the edge of the bank to an old dock platform, which by the looks of things, hasn't been used for some time. He turned on the radio to what happens to be the beginning of a Frank Sinatra song. "Now I don't think Kermit and his family over there will mind."

"You want me to dance with you? I don't know how."

"Oh, this is no waltz, it's pretty easy." He took his hat off and placed it carefully over her hair, pieces then falling around her face after the parking lot incident. "I'm the one leading. I'll show you."

He motioned her closer and captured her hand in his and brought it out straight at shoulder level. He then lifted her arm up to rest on his shoulder before snaking his arm around her side to rest at the middle of her back.

"Just like this." He began to move one foot after the other swaying both of them from side to side with the music. Sara's bare toes followed not far behind.

_"Lovely ... never, ever change...keep that breathless charm."_Greg started to sing along with the words to the song he knew so well. _"Won't you please arrange it... 'cause I love you ... just the way you look tonight."_ Sara smiled, she always loved when he'd randomly start singing. She now knew why he always chose the oddest songs to sing, he as a Marilyn Manson fan, which she never could understand in the first place.

"Did Pernilla get you into dancing too?"

"She was a ballroom teacher actually, but it's been a while. I could teach you sometime, basic stuff, but not now. It's dark and you're not wearing shoes. It might be painful."

"This is just fine for now." She rested her head, still wearing his old hat, on his shoulder. It seemed unreal to her, too good to be true kind of stuff for a woman like Sara. She finally found someone who could make her happy, make her feel safe, could literally sweep her off her feet, and he had always been there, but she hadn't bothered to notice. What was wrong with her? She had never been into all this mushy romantic stuff, dressing up, dancing, compliments; she never dealt with it well. It wasn't her, but at the time it just seemed right.

"We should do this more often." She suggested lifting her head.

"What? Go out in public, spill our drinks and nearly catch the table on fire, make Italian's cringe with the way we eat their food, take off our shoes in fancy restaurants…or all of the above?"

"Dancing…just us. If I get better then maybe we'll talk about going public with it."

"You ready for me to take you home?" He lifted her chin for her eyes to meet his. "...Or my place?"

"What are you implying?"

"Well…I…" He tried to speak but the look upon Sara's face stopped him. He followed her gaze to where she was staring over his shoulder toward a flattened patch of high grass. "Sara?" His feet ceased to guide hers as he took a step back. "What is it?"

Without saying anything, she walked over towards the same spot followed a few paces behind by Greg. "Do you have your phone on you?"

"Yeah, why?" He asked stopping beside her. "Oh, God!" He glanced down to find a young twenty-something brunette wearing a light blue button-down waitress dress.

"He's back again." She said angrily.

"Who?" He asked, thoroughly confused.

"In the last two years we've had three other cases just like this one." He handed her the phone and she quickly dialed up Grissom's number.

* * *

"Did you get all dressed up just for me?" Grissom smirked, arriving on scene to see Sara in a dress and heels and Greg wearing a shirt you didn't need to adjust your eyes to see. 

"Well, we were…you see she…and I…" He tripped over his own words. How was he ever going to explain this one. Sara wanted to keep things secret. "Sara, she stopped here after going to dinner, found the body, then called me here in the middle of my date." He quickly struggled to make up something believable.

"She called you during your date using your phone, because when I got the call it was your number, not hers that showed up on my phone." Grissom looked down along the one side of the lake to see Greg's car. "And did Sara walk here from dinner because her car isn't here?" Greg should have known that no one could fool Gil Grissom.

"Well…"

"It's okay. Both of you had tonight off, so why stay at home by yourselves." Sara didn't know if he meant it, but Sara caught a disappointed tone flowing through his speech."But…it looks like you'll have spend your night off with me as well. Sophia's on her own case. I need you two."

Greg, after his talk with Warrick, always had an extra field kit in his trunk, fully stocked and sterilized. He didn't have an extra vest or different shoes for that matter, but he claimed they wouldn't go well with her red dress. She'd never processed a scene dressed to the nines, but she didn't really have a choice. It was a hot case.

"Now let's see…sexual assault, positional asphyxiation, then he left her and took her roller skates as a souvenir." Sara stated, snapping the glove on to her left hand. She had seen it three times before. "And they'll be no fingerprints and no DNA just like the others."

"Not necessarily…" Grissom crouched down to the body's level. He gestured to the second and third buttons. They were buttoned crooked. "He got sloppy once…Maybe he left us something else."

* * *

Thanks to all of those who have reviewed. I really appreciate hearing from you all. 


	3. Accidents Will Happen

_Okay, I'm updating a bit earlier than I thought I would, but vacation can be so incredibly dull at times, but not that I want it to go away any time soon. Sorry for the lack of Greg/Sara stuff in this chapter, but it just has to be in here to make the rest of this make sense. _

Chapter Three- Accidents Will Happen

"I printed the woman's pin…you know, the one with her name on it. I found a print, but, of course matches nothing in AFIS. But first off all…why did we find prints on her, when you both said that he left nothing of himself behind for us to find, so why this time?" Greg pondered, finishing up the rest of his sandwich during a working lunch in the conference room.

"That's what science is about, answering questions, Greg. Something caused him to get sloppy with his clean up, what exactly…well we'll figure that out eventually." Greg noticed a change in the tone of Grissom's voice. He was vaguely reminding him of how Sofia usually spoke to him, like he really was a subordinate, not a fellow co-worker. It was odd to hear Grissom sound in anyway, dare he say, superior. Though he had a feeling it had a lot to do with how they all met at the scene. "Maybe he was rushed…or he heard you two and had to get out quick. We had it figured that he always wore gloves…maybe he took them off for some reason."

Greg was about to utter something more when his cell phone rang, which was odd because it was his work number, and most of the people who would be calling were in the same room with him.

"Just a second." He apologized to both Sara and Grissom before answering it. "Yes, this is he…I'm sorry, but I don't know an Ian…how did you get my number…Aggie? She's where! Oh, thank you." He ended the call, set his phone down on the table in front of him, but doesn't say anything.

"Greg…is everything okay?" Sara noticed a far away look in his eyes to replace their usual glow, very much unlike him.

"My sister lives in New York…she was in a hit and run when she was walking to work."

"Is she okay?"

"I don't know how bad she is, but she was able to tell someone to call me."

"Greg, you've got a month or more vacation on the books…why don't you take a week to go see her, maybe two." Gil advised.

"What about the case?"

"You know us…we're insomniac workaholics, if anyone can handle it without you, it's us." Sara tried to further convince him that things surprisingly could go on with out him.

"And if we need some extra help we can always call in Sofia." Though Sara was happy with Greg and could care less about she and Gil, but she still couldn't bring herself to tolerate Sofia long enough to work with her yet.

"Just go Greg, or Griss will ban you from the lab until you take some time off…I should know, he's done it to me before."

* * *

"Room 202...room 202." Greg frantically repeated to himself running through St. Vincent's hospital like a doctor late for surgery. His plane had landed an hour ago and it seemed as if he had spent more of that time searching for her room number than waiting in traffic. 

"Hey, are you lost?" A bored high school age candy striper asked in a true New Yorker accent.

"Room 202?" He begged, hoping someone could finally help him get to his sister quicker.

"Four doors down." She pointed down the hallway.

"Thank you so much." He said relieved before rushing down to that very door.

He quietly walked into her room careful not to wake her if she was sleeping. He didn't even know what her injuries were. She wasn't in the ICU, so it couldn't be near fatal.

He pulled up the visitors chair to the side of her bed. He hated to see her in a hospital bed. He didn't want her to move to New York in the first place. It was too far away for him to watch over her, whichwas probably why she wanted to live on the east coast in the first place. Something had happened to her and he wasn't there to stop it from happening.

He took her hand from where it laid by her side. He hadn't seen her in a near three years. In some ways she hadn't changed a bit. The hand he held in his still had the shortest set of fingernails on which she always nibbled when she was nervous. But other things were so different. Her hair, which was naturally Norwegian blonde, had been dyeda red darker than Catherine's ever wasand Court Tvhad beenthe last channel on the television when it was left on when she fell asleep.

Aggie's brown eyes flickered open to meet a pair just like them she hadn't seen for so long. "Greggo?" She smiled. "Hyggelig å møte deg!" (nice to see you)

"Your friend, uh…Ian called me yesterday. He said he couldn't find Papa's number, only mine. Why was he in your apartment?" He questioned going into big brother mode.

"He has a key."

"Oh…has a key, huh?"

"He's a friend, my next door neighbor. He and a few of his friends have a band, two weeks ago I had to fill in one of them on keyboard for their last gig. "

"A friend?"

"Yes, I do have a social life...unlike you." She pushed herself up carefully with one elbow. "And if you repeat me one more time I'll---"

"He's in a band. You know how guys in rock bands are? They do not make good boyfriends. They'll love you and then leave you."

"Greg! He's only my next door neighbor." She raised her voice, ending the conversation. "Now aren't you going to ask how I am? You know…hospital bed…nurses…awful paper gowns…or my leg."

"Okay…" He smiled. "What the hell happened to you, Aggie?" God, it was like he was talking to himself, a clone.

"Well, I was crossing the cross walk on the way to the studio when a car ran a red light and hit me." She couldn't really remember what happened. She was just repeating what she had been told. "My right leg is broken in two places, I have a hairline fracture in my arm from landing on top of it, a cracked rib, and I messed up my knee." She sighed, it was all hard for her to hear over again. "The doctor wants me to start therapy, but there's still a chance…I may never be able to dance again."

Greg didn't say anything, shocked by what she had just told him. She had tears in her eyes. Dance was her life. She had been prancing around the house in pink tutus since Nana Pernilla had taught her at three years old.

"I just nailed my audition for Roxie in _Chicago_…and now I'll have to give it to my understudy."

"I'm sorry." It's the only thing he could think to say. He didn't know how to help her.

"Don't I get a hug or something?" She stared at him with a blank look on her face.

"Well, I didn't know what more I could break in there."

"Just watch out for my arm, now get over here." She snapped her fingers and he bent down to finally give her a hug as she asked, and to one up her, he kissed her forehead before sitting back down.

"There…you happy?"

"Yes." She lied back down, wincing as she moved her right arm. "Now how did you get away from work long enough to actually visit me?"

"I had three weeks of vacation on the books and one more week and I'd be out of the lab unless I used some."

"So you use them now instead of my birthday or Christmas…any time I wasn't stuck in a hospital bed so we could have some fun?"

"You do remember I lived here for a year before going to Vegas."

"Well, things have changed since then. I won't be out of here for a few more days. Why don't you stay at my apartment instead of paying for an over priced hotel room. And you never know when a burglar might break in and steal my life savings." She joked. That was always his excuse for her not to move to the city. "And now you carry a gun. That guy will be shaking in his boots!"


	4. A Hard Day's Night

**Okay, now for the Las Vegas side of the story...a bit of humor, or at least _I_ think so.**

Chapter Four- A Hard Day's Night

"Come on, Grissom." Sara whined from inside the locker room, buttoning up the front of her dress. "I don't really have to wear this do I?"

"Yes…get out here." He ordered, knocking from the outside.

"It's a dress…an ugly one at that!"

"Well, you wanted to go undercover before, and now I'm letting you." She angrily whipped the door open nearly hitting him with it on the way out. She was outfitted in a blue diner uniform dress, just like their past four victims.

"Why this time? You want a reason to laugh at me?"

"No, it's smaller than the supermarket and I can sit and drink coffee without looking suspicious. Oh, I almost forgot…your skates." He picked up a pair of white roller skates off the floor by their laces and handed them to her.

"Very funny. It's going to be your fault if I fall and get sued for spilling hot coffee on someone. I haven't worn skates since I was like thirteen."

"And remember you aren't Sara, your name is Lydia." He gave her a name plate pin to wear on her uniform. "I don't know how long this will take, so if anyone asks why you've been there so long, you are a single mother working doubles to keep your daughter in private school."

"Shouldn't you be asking Catherine to do this?"

"She's not this guy's type. She's a redhead and too old to fit the profile."

"Don't tell her that." She could just imagine the other woman's reaction if she had heard that last comment first hand.It was actually a good thing that they worked completely different shifts.

* * *

She had been waiting tables for hours. She was tired, her feet ached from the awful white roller skates, and though it's normal for the first time waiting tables, she still hated the fact she was clumsy enough to nearly dump a whole omelet in some young businessman's lap while he was discussing productivity with a co-worker on his cell phone at the time. She had dealt with deaf old couples who could hardly hear her asking for their orders. Parties of ten or more had showed up without reserving an appropriate size table. And she had heard too many complaints about toast being too burnt or eggs not being cooked as they requested. Everything that had happened just made her remember how unpleasant living humans could be to work around and that she'd rather say in the morgue with Doc Robbins. 

Grissom had already drank a whole pot of coffee to himself, and hours ago had resulted to his handy dandy genius level crossword puzzles. Though compared to what he had witnessed Sara begrudgingly doing "in the name of forensics", he had the easy job.

He had an ear piece, as did she, that would transmit anything said to one another or anyone talking close enough to Sara to pick up on the bugged microphone hidden down the front of her dress. He was trying to seem inconspicuous to other people in the dinner, though his early breakfast hour was moving on toward lunch. They did however ask the owner of the diner first before setting up an undercover operation in their restaurant and they were glad to help.Since it slipped after the first victim was found that she had worked there, as did al the others, it had taken a toll on their normal number of customers.

There had been a few diners that had complemented Sara on how well she was doing even though she was rather new at it, or left a generous tip to help her out, but no one had been especially friendly, like in a possible suspect kind of way. That was until a late thirties man dressed in a business suit came in and sat at one of her tables and ordered, as he said, his usual blueberry pancake and a side of sausage.

"Um…Lydia…" He read from her name pin. "…Have you ever taken dance lessons?"

"No..actually I haven't taken any dance classes. Why do you ask, sir?" Sara repeated awkwardly louder so Grissom could easily hear it though the piece in his ear.

"_Sara, keep your eye on him."_Sara heard Gil say throughhis microphone. "_All the victims had something in common…_" She nodded to him from across the room but didn't say anything because of the man at the table. _"_…_they all moved to Las Vegas to be dancers_…_showgirls_…"

"You just seem so light on your feet, graceful. So many girls here are so clumsy…running in to people, spilling things."

"Well sir, if you were here earlier…then you might think differently." She nervously smiled back, not knowing of he was a man who was just normally odd or she was smiling in the face of a possible serial killer.

She waited until he finished up his meal and had left the restaurant to bag up his coffee cup and the silverware he used to bring it back to the lab and, hopefully with the license plane number she had quickly scribbled down as he left, get a match to wrap up the case.

* * *

There was a loud clanging of bells against a glass window pane as Grissom opened the heavy wooden door for Sara trailing close behind. As they emerged into the darkened room, Grissom's nose was greeted with the smell of cigarette smoke, and his ears with the loud cheering of the men crowded around the football game playing on ESPN at the one end of the bar. Sara had been there so many times she didn't notice it any more. 

Sara lead the way past the men in red and blue jerseys and hopped up on her usual stool at the farthest end of the bar, resting her elbows up on the water stained wood and waited for Gil the follow suit.

"I don't think I need to ask if you come here often." He coughed, getting up on the stool beside her.

"A few drinks and you won't notice it."

"Should you be here? What about your counseling?" He asked in a worried tone.

"Relax...I haven't been here in months?"

Just then the bartender came up to the two. "Hey Sara!" He grabbed a coaster and a green bottle and sets it in front of her. "The usual, right? It's been so long."

"See. I told you." She gloated to Gil.

"And who's your friend?" The young man questioned Sara.

"This is Grissom...Gil Grissom, my supervisor. Griss, this is Sam the bartender. We're celebrating." She introduced.

"So this is the infamous Mr. Grissom. What can I get for you?"

"Oh, the same." While Sam got his drink, he asked Sara quietly, "You talk about me?"

"Well, you do know you're on the news every few weeks."

"And she used to talk about you too." Sam smiled to Sara, knowing very well she didn't really want him to know that. "Enjoy." He set Gil's drink down and wandered off toward the other end of the bar.

"There really is a place where everyone knows your name."

"No, it's just Sam. He has a good memory." She picked up her drink. "To what shall we toast?"

"To the Graveyard shift. May we all be together again one day?"

"Oh, I'll definitely drink to that." Though she had always stuck by that since it even happened, her reasons had changed. At first it was about Sophia and Grissom, but now she just missed being around Nick and Warrick. They were like brothers to her,although both she and Greg still hated having to work with her.

Sara clinked her bottle with his and downed nearly half of it. "Whoa slow down."

"What, you afraid you can't keep up with me?"

"I _know_ I can't keep up with you." He watched as a near empty bottle hit the bar. He was worried about her. He always was, when he drove her home from the police station after she got pulled over, when he went to talk to her after Ecklie had suspended her, and when she got herself too investing in a case, fearing she just might do something stupid. He still remembered seeing three empty bottles and one half gone in her hand when he went to check up on her that day.

"Come on, we're supposed to be celebrating." She nudged his shoulders as she swiveled back in forth on her stool. She suddenly stopped. "You never seemed the celebrating type. At Greg's 'I finally passed' party, you were there for ten minutes and then said something about having to feed your bugs or something and never came back." Sara laughed at the thought of Grissom ever having fun at any party whatsoever.

"Speaking of that...are you sure Greg wouldn't have a problem with this?" Grissom asked hesitantly.

"Me having a drink, or a few drinks, with our supervisor after wrapping up one of the most frustrating cases we've seen...why would he care?"

"Sara, I know what's going on with you two. You're inseparable."

"Well at least one of us knows. Would you care to explain it to me?" Grissom looked at her strangely, most likely wondering if she had already had too much from the bar. "We decided to take things more serious,more official,but I don't even know what was happening between us before. It's just all so confusing. I mean, I'm actually happy for once."

With that Grissom called the bartender over and ordered up something a bit stronger. He was going to need it. He didn't want to hear about Greg. He already knew how happy she was, it showed, but for the two of them to talk about her and another man, it hurt. It was like a big slap in the face at all the ways he had pushed her away throughout the years.

* * *

_A bit later..._

Sara raised her glass, but saw Grissom wasn't paying attention. She rolled her eyes and set her glass down on the bar, hitting against the wood to get his attention. Once he looked back in her direction, she raised her glass once again.

"Not another toast." He said annoyed, not sounding quite like himself. "What is…what is there left to toast to?" The pitch in his voice changed as he tried to get the words out. Surely no one had seen this side of Grissom, not even Sara, but she was too much like him at the moment to realize that.

"To being the best damn workaholics in all of Las Vegas!" She hit her glass against his own. Not realizing her own strength, she caused some of her drink to spill over the side of the once full glass.

"Hey, watch your mouth!" Grissom advised.

"That's nothing compared to what I'd like to tell Ecklie." She looked over to Grissom who was sitting beside her not saying a word, only zoned out staring at the framed dollar bill on the wall opposite him. "Grissom?" She asked almost child-like. "Whatcha thinking about?" She was twirling a curl of her hair in her fingers, something she never usually would do.

"What was it that went so wrong between us?"

It was the dreaded question that Sara had always wanted to ask before, but was always so afraid to bring up. She had wanted to put him on the spot, back him in a corner. But now he was the one asking her for them instead.

"Well, you…I think you were afraid to do something about it… 'cause God knows I tried." Gil opened his mouth to speak, but Sara kept talking. "I asked you out to dinner and you said, _'I don't know what to do about this.'_" She drunkenly imitated lowering her voice.

"And you just got tired of waiting for me?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm sorry."

"You better be." She playfully hit him in the shoulder. "You think we could ever be friends again?"

"We aren't now?"

Grissom downed what little was left in his glass and waved to Sam for another round for both of them. "Sorry, I think you've had enough."

"Well, I sir…" He hiccupped between slurred words. "…don't think so."

"Why don't I call you a cab?"

Grissom sighed, "Fine." He pulled out his wallet and paid for their tab.

* * *

**_Please, I'd love to hear from you, good or bad...I think I can take it.From now on I won't post the next chapter until I get five reviews, though I won't post twice in one day, so it would be be up the next day._**


	5. EraseRewind

_I swear...I promise you...this is **not**, not in anyway, turning into a GSR fic. I would never do that. This is a drama, and drama's have to have a conflict, so this here is the conflict. It can't be fluffy all the time, I'm a realist and real life just doesn't work that way. I just love Grissom...but not with Sara, and I wanted to write somethings from his side of things. Don't hate me for it. I promise it will get better later.

* * *

_

Chapter Five- Erase/Rewind

She always hated when she forgot to pull the blinds in her bedroom before she went to sleep. At the time she'd normally wake up the sun would be at just the right angle to shine through the window and into her eyes. So this morning like any other she would squint and silently curse to herself.

This morning, however is much different. First of all, her head was pounding, and two, she actually felt like rolling over to Greg and forget about going to work. So, that's just what she did. She smiled and draped an arm over his chest taking in the smell of him beside her, which seemed different as well. She figured it was just some new gunk he was using in his hair. She also made a mental note to hide his ice cream. He was starting to pack on a few pounds.

That's when she knew something was terribly wrong.

She grabbed her robe hanging by her night stand and fumbled for her glasses. It had just occurred to her, Greg was visiting his sister on the other side of the country. If he was there, he obviously couldn't have been in her room too. She started backing away toward the door once it dawned on her that she was with someone at a bar the night before…Grissom.

"Gil…" She said wearily, afraid that if he woke up she wouldn't just be imagining things. "Grissom!" She repeated louder.

This time he heard it, startling him off the edge of the bed on to the floor pulling the sheets along for the fall. His eyes shot open to find himself in a strange room with a horrified Sara near the doorway.

"What the hell happened, Griss?" She panicked, pulling the neckline of her red robe closed.

Grissom looked around the brightly painted room to find articles of clothing that looked an awful lot like his own strewed about the floor and noticed that he probably should gather the sheets a bit closer to him just to be safe.

"Could…could you step outside for a moment…" He stuttered awkwardly. "..Or at least turn around please?"

"I would be more than happy." She walked out into the hallway. "But apparently I've already seen everything." She laughed nervously. From now on she swore only go out drinking by herself.

A minute later he followed out into the hallway wearing the same clothes in which he went celebrating. He always knew he hated parties, how he remembered why.

"Do you want some aspirin?" Sara asked setting down a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. He was rubbing his temples, having obviously more to drink than he was accustom to having.

"Oh, that would help so much." She opened the bottle and handed him two red and white caplets and sat down on the couch beside him, taking two pills for herself. "Look…" He began. "We need to talk about this."

"It never happened," blurted out of Sara's mouth.

* * *

The suspicious man, Harvey McCain, as the DMV database had informed them, had been taken into custody after Mia had confirmed the DNA a match to the samples collected from the first crime scene and the finger print found on the last victim was a dead ringer for the one printed from the handle of the diner's butter knife handle. Now all that was left was his apartment to process for something to connect him to all four murders. 

Based off of Doc Robbins' report, the lividity patterns of all four women lead then to believe they couldn't have been just dumped at the lake, but they were killed there. Though that didn't necessarily mean they didn't stop by his place before heading to Lake Mead.

Sara was in the man's bedroom wearing her lovely pair of orange glasses using the alternate light source on the whole room to bring out any useful information she couldn't see when she looked with her own eyes, but so far she had found nothing of much importance. Since arriving to the scene she hadn't spoken a word to Gil that she didn't absolutely have to say. They had kept to their own respective rooms working away. Gil, like Sara, hadn't yet come across anything, but seemed to find his mind wandering off to things other than the case they were working.

Though he still swore to Sara that he couldn't remember a thing that happened after they got in the cab, it was slowly starting to come back to him. He tried to push it away to the back of his mind, but for some reason it didn't want to stay where he put it. And during work, wasn't the best time for it to be coming back to the front burner.

She wanted it to stay a secret, completely forget about it, and swear up and down it never happened. She called it a mistake. The only mistake he saw was that they had been out drinking, couldn't remember half of what happened, and the fact she was practically living with Greg, for real this time around. He wasn't so sure he wanted to pretend things were different.

_Their black cab rolled up to the curb outside and Grissom, as best one man with bad balance could, pushed the door open and escorted Sara to thecab and opened the door for her. As he watched her slide across the backseat, he leaned on theframe of the carto keep himself from falling over and then got in himself._

_If the cab driver hadn't already figured they were plastered, he definitely figured that out when Grissom started singing softly to himself. "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name..."_

_"Dun...dun...Dun...dun..." Sara chimed in._

_"And they're always glad you came..."_

_"No, Sam made us leave!" Sara whined._

_"You wanna be where…something, something, something's...all the same." He continued, though forgetting the words in the process._

_"Grissom...since when do you sing?" She asked resting her head comfortably on his shoulder._

_"Since I got into celebrating with you." He rested his right hand lightly on her knee. In his right mind, he would never do such a thing, but then again he wasn't in his right mind. He was out of his mind. It wasn't that he hadn't thought of it before, it was just that he had always expected a slap in the face, but this time there was a good chance she had no idea he had done anything in the first place._

_"We're here!" She announced, seeing the cab pull into the parking lot to her apartment building._

_Once the car came to a stop, she managed to get out, pay the fare, and walk a few paces before Grissom could crawl out of the cab and follow close behind her._

_"What are you doing?" She turned around, finally noticing his staggering steps behind her._

_"I thought I should at least walk you to your door." He swayed and stumbled a few steps away from her. He'd nearly fallen over before she noticed and linked her arm with his to safely guide him up the stairs._

_Once at her door, Sara let go of Grissom to get her keys out of her jacket pocket. As she did he leaned against the door waiting for her to open it. Though Sara momentarily forgot everything she learned in physics, because gravity won when she pushed the door open and Grissom fell to the floor._

_"Oh God, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" She crouched down to his view, and lent a hand to pull him back up to his feet. "You didn't hurt anything, did you?" She shut the door behind him and walked a few steps further into her kitchen._

_"No Sara...I'm just fine." He answered slowly, trying to form each word correctly, which for some reason seemed much harder than usual. As he spoke, his hands found their way down her sides to rest around her waist._

_"You know...my couch is free if you'd rather stay then have to tumble all the way down the stairs to get back_ _to the cab." Her fingertips crept up the bare skin of his arms to his neck and the remnants of his graying stubble as she stared back into his hazy blue eyes waiting for him to answer._

_He wrapped his arms tighter around her waist, bringing her body closer to him. "I'd like that." Sara felt the movement from his lips as he spoke inches from her own._

And that's where it got a bit fuzzy. Everything after that he couldn't remember. It was a big blur. He couldn't remember the words they exchanged…if there were any words said at all.

Just then was when Sara chose to call for him from the other rooms so he was forced to put all of that to the back of his mind and go back into working Grissom mode.

"Griss…I think I found something." Finally some kind of cheery tone came back into her voice that he hadn't heard since the night before.

He hurried into the hallway from where he heard her voice. "What?"

She had, on a hunch, opened the closet, thinking that if someone wanted to hide something that would be the best place for it. His eyes followed down to the floor where Sara's finger pointed toward. "I would know those anywhere." Four white pairs of roller skates are lined up at the bottom of the closet beside a shoebox of photographs, ones she picked up to see that there was one of each of the victims she had come to recognize so well.

"You know some serials like to take souvenirs to relive each kill every once in a while."

* * *

When Sara and Grissom entered the interrogation room carrying the four pairs of skates they had just collected, two people were already seated at the table situated in the middle of the room, McCain and his lawyer. The suited lawyer was leafing though the pages in the manila folder in front of him and occasionally consulting his client, though McCain was too busy staring off toward the door, though which they had just entered, slightly rocking back and forth. 

"Now Mr. McCain, if you can, explain how these roller skates happened to be in the bottom of your closet?" Grissom asked as they both set two pairs down on the table.

The man's lawyer spoke up before Harvey had a chance to defend himself. "How can you prove these have anything to do with the four women from the diner? Just because the man happened to have four pair of white skates in his house, does not make him a murderer!"

"Well it does when inside there were epithelial samples matching that of the four women that were killed…"

"Can you prove that?" The lawyer continues defending Mr. McCain.

Grissom pulled the lab results out of her file and handed them over to the stubborn man to back their story. "Now…would you care to explain?"

Harvey remained silent staring off towards Sara, as if he was in a daze and completely unaware of where he currently was.

"Okay then…all the other scenes, you were on top of things. You knew what you were doing. You wore gloves and you cleaned up afterwards." Though it was Gil who was addressing him, the man still insisted on intently watching Sara instead. "Why did you slip up so much on the last one…DNA samples…fingerprints…You took off your gloves, didn't you?" There was still silence throughout the interrogation room."You took off your gloves to touch her."

Gil noticed how she sat uncomfortably in her chair, though naturally anyone in her position would. She had met him before when she was working in the diner. McCain knew that she was the one person who had put him in that very interrogation room. She had been the one who caused him to get caught, and if for some reason they couldn't get a conviction in the end of all things, shewas scared.

"Christine…my Christine…" The only words the mad man muttered, but Sara knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Your fiancée…" Sara began, but not with out an odd look from Grissom. "…seventeen years ago there was a case much like this one. The soon to be Christine McCain…she came to Las Vegas to become a dancer…she worked at the same diner…" Grissom then started to remember the case to which she was referring. It was one of the first cases Grissom had worked since moving to Las Vegas. "Then she met someone at the diner…said he could make her a star…he took her out to the lake…and he killed her…right?" Harvey then attempted to get out of his chair, but he was quickly forced to sit back down. "This last victim, she was the splitting image of Christine. She even had the same name. You took of your gloves…you wanted to feel her again. But she still wasn't your Christine…then you lost it."

As Sara finished, he jumped from his chair, and before anyone could catch him, he had a firm hand grasping Sara's neck. Grissom didn't give a moment's thought before grabbing the guy and pushing him away from her with more force than he thought he had. McCain fell over backwards and was escorted out of the room by Brass. The last time something like that had happened to Sara, he was locked out of the room with absolutely no way to help her. He wasn't going to let it happen again.

* * *

_Okay so now that case is wrapped up and except for one scene, Grissom is completely out of the rest of the story...so no worries Sandle's fans! Don't be afraid to tell me what you think...the good, the bad, and possibly even the ugly too!  
And just so you know, I'm no longer going to be "review nazi" who refuses to post until I get 5 reponses. It gets pretty boring waiting to post until I hear what you all think of the one before. The next chapter should be up soon, depending on my schedule. I have three presentations in the next two weeks (one on forensics...so that's not so bad). We'll see..._


	6. Psychobabble

_I love dialogue, so sorry if they all get a little wordy throughout this whole story. I try not to give them monologues, and actually show you not tell you what going on, but it's tough for me. Finally, this will be the end of all those terrible Grissom/Sara scenes...I didn't want to disappoint you all. Sorry if I ever did._

Chapter Six- Psychobabble

"Sara…" Grissom peeked his head out of his office doorway just to catch her on her way out to the parking lot after shift.

"Huh?" She stopped at the sound of his voice. Any other time she would be fine with staying later if she had a new lead on a case, but they had just wrapped the case, and frankly she didn't want to see Grissom anymore then was necessary.

"Could I see you in my office for a minute?" That was one phrase that no one ever wanted to hear from their supervisor, especially after such "celebrating". She had a sinking feeling she already knew what it was about. "It won't take long."

Sara took a seat in one of two leather chairs in front of his desk. As she did, he closed the door behind her. "I just wanted to call Greg to see how he's holding up." She was in a hurry.She'd waited all shift just to see how things were going, and Grissom was taking up her time with something about which she probably didn't feel like discussing. "Greg's really close with Aggie and I don't know how well he's taking all of this." Not to mention how he would take what news she hadn't get told him.

"About Greg.." Gil walked back over and sat on the corner of his desk in front of Sara. "This thing between the two of you…it isn't going to get between you and your work?"

"No…and why should I have to talk about this with you?" She asked rather offended.

"I'm your supervisor, that's why."

"You use that excuse for everything don't you?" It was the one reason he had always stuckwith when she had asked him out to dinner in the past. "My personal life is not your business, supervisor or not."

"It is when it interferes with work."

"Is what Greg and I have affecting how well we work? You tell me." Gil tried to speak, but Sara started up again. "Greg and I have wrapped more cases in the past few weeks than both you and Sofia combined."

"It doesn't matter how fast you close cases if the facts aren't accurate."

"And do you have any proof of that?"

"No, but that's not my point."

"Well, you'd better be getting to it."

"I just want you to know what you're getting yourself into. If Ecklie gets word---"

"This has nothing to do with Ecklie. It's all about you, and what you want. I'm happier now than I've ever been before…and that bothers you. It bothers you because it's Greg who can do that for me, not you." She paused for a moment realizing she was getting too loud. His office walls weren't sound proof. She should have known, all his conversations with Sophia she had heard from the room next door. "This is about last night, isn't it?" She whispered, not wanting any extra ears to overhear.

"Sara, do you really think you can just forget about it?"

"Yes…yes I can. It was a mistake, it meant nothing to me, nothing...so why shouldn't I say it never happened."

"The only mistake I see is that I had to be that drunk to ever do anything and you can't remember half of what happened."

"And I don't care to!"

"Papilio Ulysses."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Papilio Ulysses…the largest butterfly in all of Australia...in blue and black ink between your shoulder blades. Why do I know that?"

"Because when you had the chance you cared more about your bugs than you ever did about me!"

"Sara…" She stood up from her chair, more than ready to leave. "Wait!"

"I waited long enough. I've moved on and I'd advise you to do the same." Before she could get past his desk, Gil grabbed her arm and pulled her back into his embrace. He drew her closerto kissed her, but but before he could she pushed away from him and returnedthe gesturewith a loud slap across his face. "You can remember that along with last night all you want, but keep in mind, I won't be jogging your memory anytime soon." She said coldly before running out of his office.

Watching her leave, he sat back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk, not caring that there were papers covering every last inch of it. He pulled out the side drawer and rifled through it until he found a small green box. He opened it, poured a handful of the chocolate covered critters and popped them in his mouth.

Grissom messed up and he was alone…once again. He often wondered if that was his fate. He was fated to be Grissom, the middle aged bug guy who had never been married and never would be. Besides all that he felt for Sara, he couldn't really say he had ever been in love before.

"Grissom…" He lifted his head to see Sara in the doorway. "…I've got three weeks vacation time. You wouldn't mind signing my papers for a week or two's leave, would you?" She set a form down on his desk.

"I also could get you suspended again after all you just did."

"Something tells me Ecklie wouldn't be too sad to see you go for five days unpaid after I tell him my side of the story."

Grissom moved his feet from off his desk and took up a pen. He quickly scribbled down his first and last name and handed the paper back, a forced smile across his face. "Have fun in New York."

"I will. Thank you." How he knew exactly what she was thinkning, she couldn't quite understand.

* * *

One moment she was in Grissom's office trying to keep from saying anything more that could possibly get her fired and the next moment she had booked a flight to New York and was attempting to navigate her way through O'Hare airport halfway there. She hadn't even mentioned anything about it to Greg. In a city of eight million, she didn't know where to find him, she didn't know what hospital Aggie was in or where he was staying, at his sister's place or at a hotel. And speaking of that...how was she supposed to find a vacant hotel room on short notice without going all the way to New Jersey. 

But she wasn't going to worry about that right now. She had the whole flight from Chicago to New York to think about it. Now she had to concentrate on finding her gate…gate 24 and she had twenty minutes to push through crowds of people from where she had landed all the way back at gate one before her plane was set to taxi down the runway without her.

"Excuse me," she politely yelled back to an Asian couple she could help but run into, though she highly doubted they could understand her apology.

As it turns out, all the running she did from one gate to another was for nothing. Out of breath, she arrived at gate twenty-four to read on the departure board, "flight 815 to New York: delayed one hour," in bright red letters.

She took a seat amongst the other patient passengers. There was no point in standing in front of the glowing sign staring at the letters hoping that they change to her advantage…what ever that would be.

At this point she would be glad to just stay in Chicago, definitely not around Grissom in Vegas, but not really with Greg in New York. She was confused. She actually felt sorry for all that she had said to Gil before she had left. She knew how he felt...the same way Sara did every time he had given he the "I don't know what to do about this" speech, but even worse. He remembered everything that happened, but she, as much as she tried, couldn't remember anything other than what she witnessed when she awoke in the morning. She said it meant nothing, but the truth was, if it had only been a month or so earlier and under slightly different conditions, it would have meant the world to her.

In a matter of hours she would be landing in New York, but she had no idea what she'd say to Greg when she got there, the real reason she flew across the country, not just to see him and Aggie. She knew how much Greg loved her. He'd told her so many times, and she had done the one worse thing she could have ever done. She felt awful and there was a good chance that, even though it was Greg she was talking about, it would still ruin everything.

That was it. She jumped up from her seat, startling the old woman half asleep in the chair to her right. She grabbed her carry on bag and proceeded to the one wall lined with payphones. She pulled a quarter out of her pocket, dialed the number she had memorized, waiting for his phone to ring.

"Sanders?" He answered his cell phone he used mostly for work.

"Greg?"

"Sara!" He could tell just by the sound of her voice. "How's the case? Have you and Griss gone crazy yet?"

"No, actually we closed it yesterday."

"You were always the one to go crazy first, but you don't throw coffee pots like he does. Sorry I couldn't be there to help you guys."

"Well, actually it's just Sophia and Grissom on shift. I took a little vacation time."

"Are you sick or did you get suspended again?"

"Neither. I'm actually in Chicago waiting for my plane to New York."

"You're coming to New York…to see me? Aggie will be so happy to see you. She said that if I'm going to spend all my time visiting her talking about you, she was going to meet you one way or an other." That really got to Sara. While he was gone all he did was talk about her...and look what all she had done.

"Can…" She stuttered. "Can you tell me where I can find you? You know…once I get there."

"On the corner of East Seventh Street and 2nd Avenue, that's Aggie's apartment, but you might as well meet us at St. Vincent's room 202. She won't be back at home for a few days or so. I don't think she'd mind an extra guest."

* * *

"Well, Aggie…It looks like you're going to meet Sara after all." Greg announced after ending to call. 

"I've certainly heard enough about her. 'She so smart and funny and absolutely gorgeous.'" Aggie mocked him. She was hoping she wasn't like all the others she had come to know.

"Not just that…Sara's different, there's something about her, you know. I mean, she's like no one I've ever met before…I actually think you're going to like her."

She scoffed, "Yeah, we'll see about that…" Just then, Aggie's doctor knocked on the frame of the open door armed with some news.

"You didn't happen to toss out your ballet shoes yet…"

"What are you talking about?" She was unsure as to what he was working towards, but she hoped it was what she was thinking.

"Well it seems, after the last scans, that your knee isn't really as bad as we first thought. One quick surgery and you'll be on your way back to normal."

"You're kidding me!"

"Yes, of course he is Aggie…that's his goal in life, to smash the hopes of all his patients!" Greg replied dripping with sarcasm.

"I still think you'll have to pass up on being Roxie, but with time maybe you'll get another chance."


	7. Too Much Information

Chapter Seven- Too Much Information

Sara too, had been wandering through the whole hospital looking for room 202, she swore she had seen every other number possible except the one for which she happened to be searching. She really had no _good_ reason why she had hopped a flight to New York in the first place, so maybe it was a sign, an omen, telling her than only bad could happen once she found the room where he was to meet Greg. She knew very well there would be some bad after telling him what had happened while the cat was away. She just wanted to turn around and leave, but it was just then when she found the right door…number 202.

"…I mean, I heard about the lab explosion, but you never told me about being at a shoot out."

"Well, I didn't want you to worry. There were bullets flying everywhere…I was scared." He confessed to the girl in the hospital gown that Sara knew had to be his sister, but wouldn't have guessed by her appearance.

"Really? _The_ Greg Sanders…_scared_?" Sara interrupted as she entered the room. Upon seeing her, Greg gave her a big hug as if he hadn't seen her for years, when in reality it had only been a week.

"Sara? What's wrong?" He pulled away from her embrace to ask her. He really looked worried.

"What would make you think there was something wrong?"

"You finally took some vacation days and few all the way across the country…I'd say that's not something you'd do without a reason."

Now she felt as if she was the one stuck in the interrogation chair and not on the other side of the table for once. He couldn't tell him then, not in front of his sister.Was he on to her? Did he know something that she didn't know he knew? No, of course. Lab gossip traveled fast, but not at all like this, not across the country.

"I...I've just had two too many threats against my life in the last few months…"

"What! Again…the serial guy, well what…how did…"

"And Grissom practically threw the guy across the room…" It was the last name she wanted to mention at the moment, but she did anyway, wincing slightly as she did.

"Grissom to the rescue…see I had nothing to worry about. You guys did just fine without me." Sara forced a smile and just nodded. It made her feel even worse, so she decided it was a good time to change the subject "It's okay, I'm fine now, a little shaken up, but good none the less." She glanced over to the young redhead in the hospital bed beside him. "Hey…aren't you going to introduce me?"

"Sara…this is my sister, _Agatha_…"

"_Gregers_…" She whined.

"Sorry, this his my sister who happens to hate her name, so we just call her Aggie." Sara should have known that with grandparents Olaf and Pernilla, who spoke more Norwegian than English, they'd have rather odd names as well. "And Aggie this Sara, my…girlfriend." He glanced over to Sara for some kind of approval to actually use the term they hadn't yet decided on using.

"Well, Sara…it's nice to finally meet you. He's talked so much about you…for a while I was starting to think he'd made you up."Aggie laughed, though stopped because it hurt her ribs to continue. "He's done it before, so…"

"Hey! Once, only once. Okay…"

"I don't think so, Greg. What about the Russian model you told the guys about last year. Hodges didn't even fall for that one." Sara added in her own two cents.

"You know what…I think I'm beginning to like her Greg." She said honestly. "Plus she doesn't have bleached blonde hair like the rest of them…so she has to be smarter than some that I've met."

"Aggie…"

"Fine, I'll stop."

* * *

"And…and a ONE, two, three." Aggie directed clapping to the beat. Even a hospital bed and an injured knee couldn't stop her. If she couldn't be Roxie, she was certainly going to help someone else learn to dance. 

"Ouch, Sara!" Greg yelled slightly hopping on one foot. "Watch where you're putting those feet!"

"How can I? Aggie said I'm supposed to keep my back straight, arms up, and eyes focused on you…not my shoes!"

"Whoa, okay." Aggie interrupted their arguing. "Forget all that until you get the steps down. Let's start over…and watch where you're stepping, both of you. They've got tubes and cords all over this place, so unless you want an audience of frantic doctors for Grandma Moses over there, don't do it." She pointed to beyond the curtain.

"I won't yell anymore Sara, I promise. Now let's try this again." He smiled.

"Right foot back…left to the side…" All the steps Aggie was telling her were drowned out by the one, two three's Greg whispered in her ear as she watched her feet carefully. She managed to make one full turn before cracking up that caused her to stop moving.

"Stop it, Greg…or I'll step on your big toe again." She threatened, trying not to laugh.

"You better not make things worse if you want her to learn this before the wedding." Aggie scolded.

"What wedding…you're getting married!" He assumed.

"God no!" She exclaimed. "It's just when Nana learns about Sara she'll start planning your wedding. She told me, 'If that boy hasn't bothered to call me, he better at least be spending that time with a nice girl. He isn't getting any younger you know. I had gotten married and had your father before I was his age.' " She mimicked the strange old lady with whom they grew up.

"I know…but I don't see a problem with not being married, Plus, Sara's older than me and she hasn't gotten married yet." He joked.

She elbowed Greg in the stomach. "You're just lucky I don't care like Catherine or you'd be with Doc Robbins right now!"

* * *

Aggie couldn't be more happy, though she had a cast on her foot, a brace on her knee, and was, at the moment, hobbling around on crutches, she was still free from the hospital. She had been trapped in that room for over a week, and she was tired of it, tired of being bed ridden, trapped within the stark white walls, and sick of the awful food. She was back home, or almost, as soon as she managed to get herself into the elevator and up four floors to her home. Though it took a lot longer than she had wanted, thanks in most part to Sara and Greg's attempts to help her when she knew very well she could do it fine without them. 

When she stepped inside it was, oddly enough, exactly how she had left it, considering Greg had been living there for the past week. In fact, it seemed a bit more tidy. All her black and white pictures were hung straight on the sage green walls and were clean of all the dust that was usually magnetically drawn to them. The dirty dishes she had left in the sink had been washed and put away. Though it still looked as if Greg was living on her living room couch, which he was, his stuff was all folded neatly into his suitcase instead of strewed across the floor like his room always was when they were both much younger. There was even a bouquet of flowers in a vase on the kitchen table, which she figured were a welcome home gift from her brother.

Greg sat Aggie's bag down on the floor by the closed door leading to her room, while she took the chance to help herself on to the couch. "That neighbor guy…Evan…uh, Ian...whatever his name is, stopped by earlier. He hardly said a word to me, other than that those flowers over there were for you when you got home. I don't think he knew I was staying here…"

"Oh…" She said, not really wanting to continue with the subject. "Yeah, he can be pretty shy at times…" It was partially true, but it was mostly the fact that she didn't really want the two to cross paths quite yet. "What do you all want for dinner? You know I could kill for some really good Chinese right now…"

"Uh…yeah that's fine with me…" Sara nodded as well.

"We'll the best place is Wok'n Roll seven blocks down, but they don't deliver…" She strategically pointed out, hoping he would go for it anyway.

"Oh, of course…" Greg, as she already knew, would do about anything for her, and as of now she needed a moment without him around. She watched him grab his jacket and dash right back out the door again. As soon as the door closed behind him, she called Sara to come sit beside her.

"It's time for payback…"

"Excuse me…what?" Sara was a bit confused by it.

"Greg, whenever he would meet someone knew from my personal life, he would always tell all kinds of really embarrassing stories about me. You know, like baby pictures, blackmail kind of stuff, but he just told them anyway."

"Really…Greg did that?" She was quite surprised that he would do anything like that, but still it sounded like a fair deal. "So what have you got?"

Twenty or so minutes later, Greg returned back with a bag of take out containers. As he approached the door, he heard female laugher from behind the door, assumingly Aggie and Sara's. What they found so hilarious he didn't quite know. He pressed his ear up against the door to enhance his hearing.

"He had these footed pajamas that Nana Pernilla got him for Christmas when he was seven. They had little bunny ears and a furry tail on the back. He hated them so much, but you know how Grandmas are…She made him try them on and took pictures of him. He didn't wear them at home, but whenever we went to visit he had to bring him with."

"We had this one case, like five years ago dealing with this famous showgirl, so Greg had to process her headdress, you know for hair samples. Well, Grissom came back to get the results and found Greg dancing around the lab in this humongous headdress…gold beads hanging around his face, sequins, the work…and then he noticed Grissom had caught him, he tried to hide it behind his back. There were feathers sticking up everywhere…you should have seen Gil's face!"

"I guess I'm not the only one who wants to be on stage…"

Just then he chose to open the door, the least bit happy. "Aggie…the bunny pajamas…Why!" He handed Sara's takeout order to her, sat down in the old comfy chair adjacent to the couch, and began to eat his own, keeping Aggie's hostage.

"It was necessary information…" She quickly said.

"For what situation would Sara ever need to know that Nana made me wear bunny pajamas? Why!" Aggie, still couch ridden due to her leg, reached attempting to snatch her dinner from him, but he pulled it out of her reach just in time.

"Well then…why did you have to tell Eric when he came to pick me up before prom that during my first dance recital I fell flat on my face and ran off stage crying!" She hobbled off the couch andsnatched the white box out of his hands and sat back down to eat.

"You were going to prom…you know, dancing…'It was necessary information'!" He debated back, though with a mouth full of noodles.

It was time for more retaliation. "You know what…" She directed the question towards Sara. "He failed his driver's test…three times." She paused for a moment as Sara let out a chuckle. "And a month after he finally got his license, he manage to crash the car into a telephone pole."

"It was a squirrel. What...did you just want me to run him over?"

"You did both, quashed the squirrel _and_ ran into a telephone pole! And Papa made him give up his chance to go to Space Camp and get a job over the summer to pay for it."

Sara could just picture it now if the whole situation hadn't happened. He'd actually have a legitimate reason to be referred to as a 'space cadet', not only for his plentiful blonde moments.

She laughed. "If that's what Papa Olaf did, I'd hate to hear what your parents did to him."

There was an odd silence between the two siblings, that left her puzzled. Greg began to speak softly. "Sara…I never told you, but…Papa and Nana were the ones who we lived with then, the one's who raised us. When I was eight, my…our mom and dad went back to Norway for their tenth anniversary…and on their way back their plane went down somewhere over the Atlantic…we never saw them again."

"I'm so sorry…I…" It explained so much. She had always wondered why she had never heard anything about his parents. All the weird stories had all been about Olaf and Pernilla. If the average person couldn't remember much before they were four years old, thenneither onehardly knewtheir parents. Sadly enough, she knew exactly how it felt.

"On a lighter note…" Aggie ended the awkward silence, simply because neither one of them ever liked to discuss the previous topic at hand,and thought it was best to change the subject."Who's up for watching Dirty Dancing…I know I am!" Greg just groaned. She had already forced him to watch it a hundred times before…what difference would one more make?


	8. Lipstick Lies

I hope I did this chapter justice. I was tempted to use a few choice words that I myself don't personally use, but I didn't.

Chapter Eight-Lipstick Lies

_"I'd like that." She could feel the small breath escape his lips as he spoke just inches from her own._

_His hazy eyes never left her gaze as her hand slid down from his face to the zipper of his jacket. He removed his hands from around her middle just enough to let the dark blue material slip off his shoulders andfall on to the couch._

_"Five years is just two long." She grasped the front of his shirt closing the gap between them and forcing his lips against hers._

_It was the one thing she had waited five long years, actually more,to happen and for once he wasn't in opposition to it. Grissom toyed with the hem of her shirt as he lured her down the hallway. He looked into her eyes as he began to slowly move her shirt further up her torso, looking for some kind of silent permission._

It was morning...thank God. It had been a awful night.Without lifting her head from the pillow she could see the East Village's old brick buildings and taller newer buildings standing farther beyond the others if she squinted from the early sunlight reflecting off the many windows back in to her eyes. For some reason she was alone. Propping herself up on her elbows, she remembered where she was, and could hear loud music playing just beyond the door. She planted her feet on the floor and walked toward the sound. Opening the door she was greeted with the smell of something burning.

She hurried out into the main room to see Aggie on crutches, with Greg's help, dropping slices of burnt toast into the garbage can on the kitchen side of the room.

"What happened?" Her voice was drowned out by the stereo playing, so she turned it off catching their attention in the process. "So Pernilla only taught you how to make Spaghetti, not toast?"

"No…" Aggie answered annoyed. "Greg was supposed to be watching the toaster, but he didn't. I had to hobble over and pull the torched remains out and toss 'em." She looked over to Greg with a look that could cause a felony charge.

"Well, good morning sunshine!" He laughed seeing Sara still dressed in her pajamas and her hair smushed up on one side.

"Very funny, Greg. I know your hair looks a lot worse in the morning than mine so I wouldn't be talking right now." She came back after his comment which ended it right then and there. "Aggie let me make breakfast…it's the least I could do."

"No, I can do it!" She said angrily, some what surprising Sara with her reaction. "I just wanted Greg to get up and get the toast, not because I couldn't do it, but because it was burning and I'm just really slow. How 'bout you get the toast and I'll deal with the bacon…'cause Greg has told me how you don't like meat and…and if you aren't going to eat any, you shouldn't have to cook it." She started rambling as if she was thinking about something else and not noticing the words that were coming out of her mouth.

"_I'm gonna be a celebrity…that means somebody everyone knows_…" Aggie sang quietly trying to kick her one leg up while hobbling over to the refrigerator. "_They're gonna recognize my eyes…my hair, my teeth, my boobs, my nose_…"

Chicago, that's what was bothering her, and Greg knew it. She had wanted to be a dancer ever since she first took lessons when she was just in preschool. Greg hated when ever his friends came over to his house and his little sister would be flitting about the house in her frilly pink dress-up tutus. She was finally living in New York City, finally got a main roll in a big play and now some non-English speaking illegal immigrant in a stolen a car had dropped his glasses and swerved into the crosswalk to ruin all that. What were the chances of that?

"And I'll just sit on the couch and do nothing like the two of you think all men do." Greg said propping his feet up on the coffee table, sitting in front of the television on the other side of the room.

"Exactly…he's not much use in a kitchen, is he?" Aggie poked fun of the fact he barely survived college on Raumen noodles.

"His spaghetti isn't half bad though." Sara said oddly sincere for the conversation. "Or do you just always win over women by making your own spaghetti sauce because that's the only thing you can make."

"Don't forget you nearly burnt down the kitchen when you caught Nana's curtains on fire."

"I was ten and it was with my chemistry set!" He corrected her jumping off the couch.

"Nana's still afraid to let you go into the kitchen even for a glass of milk." She flipped the strips of bacon over in the frying pan before going on further. "Listen…it gets pretty boring around here hanging around 'ol crippled me. Why don't you show Sara around town…have some fun?"

"Really? You sure you'll be okay here by yourself?" Greg turned right back into overprotective brother mode once again. After all he did fly to New York to see his sister, not go gallivanting around town with Sara.

"I didn't get much sleep last night, so I'd just be taking a nap the whole time. So why stay here?"

* * *

Nearly an hour had passed since Greg and Sara had grabbed their jackets and headed down the hallway. And for that length of time Aggie had been sound asleep, snoring away on the living room couch when she heard a familiar knock at the window. Aggie blinked open her eyes and carefully swung both feet off the couch and propped herself up on one crutch to help her get up and walk the few feet to the window. Though once she got there the window was already pushed all the way up and a foot dressed in one of a pair of old beat up black boots was stepping through into her living room from the fire escape outside. 

"Aggie…you didn't have to get up just for me." Ian said standing up straight after crouching through the window frame. "I know by now how to get the window to work." He stole a quick peck before helping her back to the couch. "So where's your brother? He isn't here, is he?" He looked around nervously towards either the bathroom or the extra bedroom wondering from which door he might see him suddenly appear.

"No…he went out with Sara, they won't be back for a while yet." She leaned back resting her head on Ian's shoulder.

"We need to talk."

Uh-oh…the dreaded four words. "Should I be worried?" She laughed through her teeth.

"Why do you have such a problem with Greg finding out about me? I mean…your grandmother knows about me, but for some reason I'm not good enough to meet your brother." He said sounding more like a paranoid woman than some want to be rockstar by which Greg liked to refer to him.

Aggie let out a loud sigh. If guys thought women were tough to deal with, they'd never once listened to themselves. "It's just…Greg…he's my older brother…over-protective, you know. He's just really picky. He could tear you right apart…well, not in a literal sense…but he'll tell you out right everything he doesn't like about you whether you like it or not…really."

"So you're saying no matter what he's pretty much going to hate me."

"Yeah." She answered bluntly.

"You know he's going to have to know about me eventually."

"How about I break it to him gently then you can meet him later."

* * *

He had taken her on the grand tour, all of his favorite places from when he had lived there more than five years ago. They stopped for coffee in a small shop down the street from Aggie's apartment. He claimed it was the only place he had found that even came close to his own Hawaiian brew. He forced her, after much protest, to attempt rock climbing at Chelsea Pier. 

Of course he did bring her to some of Manhattan's 'touristy' places, such as the Statue of Liberty, through he complained about it being boring since you can't even go up to the very top anymore, and it makes your neck awfully sore just staring at the old rusting woman. But he took her there anyway, because he's just such a nice guy as she said.

After their afternoon on the town, it was time to take the subway back to the East Village. Sara had been to New York City on a couple of occasions with her foster family and for a class trip nearly twenty years ago, though she wasn't used to subway trains. They gave her an awful claustrophobic feeling being in a tunnel underneath the ground. And she always seemed to have the most peculiar people sitting beside her.

This time, the man, she swore he had to have just crawled from his home under a bridge. He had a distinct odor, one mixed of part not showering for nearly a week, and of wet dogs, though it hadn't rained since before her plane landed. His clothes were tattered and torn, and his chin was scruffy. Normally she would feel bad for such a man, but the look upon his face made her ask Greg to slide down the seat to save her from the strange man.

"That better?" He smiled the smile he knew Sara loved to see, but it made her feel even worse about what it was she hadn't told him yet. "Hey Sar…what's wrong?" It was odd how well he could read her emotions without even hearing her speak. It was just one of the many things he had picked up quickly from his promotion…observation. Too bad he couldn't read minds too, then she wouldn't have to be the bearer of bad news.

"Greg…we need to talk." She finally spat out after the third attempt.

"Uh oh…what did I do now?" He joked. On the back of his digital camera, he looked through the many pictures he had snapped of Sara , ones she had taken of him, and ones of the both of them they'd asked a random stranger to take. Many of them, he couldn't help but laugh just looking at them.

"It's not that funny…" She said sounding serious. She didn't want to tell him, but she had to do it. She had no choice. If she waited any longer she'd most likely have an even worse reaction from him.

"No really, it's you…'attempting' to rock climb." He showed her on the small screen of the camera. He either knew her news was indeed bad news and was just trying not to think about it, or hetruely was clueless.

"Greg…when you left to come out here...and I was still in Vegas helping Griss with the serial…"

"Yes…did you guys make the front page of thenewspaper again? Why can't I ever be in on one of those cases?" He really was clueless.

"Well, actually…yeah, but that's not my point." Remember- always tell bad news like ripping off a band-aid. You better make it fast. "After Griss and I got a matching sample from the undercover work at the diner---"

"He made you wear the awful blue dress didn't he?" He just wasn't cooperating with the _fast_ idea.

"Yes Greg. But will you please let me talk…" When Sara gave orders every one listened, even Greg on occasions. "…after we got back a positive match on the guy…Gil and I went out to celebrate, out drinking, you know…and then we took the same cab home, and well, we were both drunk, and he tried to help me up to my apartment…and well…he never went back down to the cab after I got home."

"Sara…" He laughed nervously. "…are you saying what I think you're saying?" He had to ask again to make sure he wasn't the one with the hearing problem. He didn't want to believe it was true so he thought if he asked some how it would result in a different answer.

"Yeah…it is and I'm so sorry…" Sara began to apologize, but she was interrupted.

"You spend one drunken night with Grissom after I leave town and all you can say is…I'm sorry?" Technically, he didn't really give her much of a chance to say anything more than that, but he wasn't really thinking about what was pouring out of his mouth at that moment.

Sara pleaded while she had the chance. "Greg, you know it didn't mean anything to me…it was a mistake."

"No, no it wasn't. You will never be over Grissom. Will you?" Greg's voice was increasing in volume with each word he spoke. Sara figured that those around them on the subway had figured they were rehearsing for their guest spot on the Jerry Springer show, and she was now seriously rethinking the idea of telling him in public, especially a crowded subway train. But she felt that if she didn't get it out then she never would have. "That's why you didn't want anyone to know about us. You didn't want Grissom to find out, right?"

"But--"

"No Sara, you were just settling for me because you couldn't get what you really wanted. Grissom wouldn't make his move so…what, you just used me to get him to do something!"

"No! You know I'd never do that! I mean he did try something…the next day in his office…I slapped him."

"Then why would you just give up all that we had between us?"

"I would never give all that up, Greg! Never…I wasn't in my right mind. It was a mistake...I swear it was."

"If you can't just go to a bar for a few friendly drinks with our boss without getting drunk and bringing him home with you, then…maybe you really do have a drinking problem!"

If it hadn't hurt her to hear him shoot down every single apology that she said, it definitely did once his last comment came out of his mouth. As soon as he said it, even Greg himself knew it. A small single tear started to roll down her cheek. They were on a subway surrounded by people and Sara was crying. Sara never openly cried in public, in front of anyone but himself.

"Sara…I didn't mean--." He was quickly interupted.

"No…you wouldn't take my apology…I'm not excepting yours either." She moved away from him to where she was sitting beside the creepy man earlier, leaving Greg by himself to be glared at by an old woman sitting across from him. It was going to be an interesting journey home.


	9. Where Did It All Go Wrong?

_I took inspiration from my best friend's father on this chapter. I haven't actually witnessed "the white knuckle interrogation", but I have heard stories of what her sister's homecoming date had to go through a few years back._

Chapter Nine- Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Despite their fallout on the subway, they still found themselves both taking the same elevator up to Aggie's apartment, though there still was an uncomfortable silence between the two. All there was to be heard was the quiet hum of the old elevator carrying them up to the fourth floor.

Greg was still trying to comprehend all that Sara had told him, and Sara was trying to figure whether she really had screwed up everything thing between them and attempted to read his mind. She didn't think things were over and she desperately hoped that some how he was thinking the same thing, but she dared not to mention anything at the same time.

A short ding interrupted all those thoughts as they reached the right floor and the silver doors parted in front of them. Sara stepped out ahead of Greg and continued down the hallway at a quickened pace to keep a fair distance between them. Though the whole action really had no point, since she had to wait until Greg caught up with the key.

He turned the knob and pushed the door inward to see Aggie, not asleep as he expected, but on the couch looking more than cozyin the arms ofIan.

"Just neighbors…really!" He yelled upon seeing them.

"What is your problem! Do you want me to have no social life what so ever? You do and you're happy, why can't you let me be too?" She hopped off the couch and stormed over across the living room towards him, which of course was humorous to him because of her crutches, but he held it back anyway."You never approve of any of my friends, my boyfriends. I'm not a kid anymore and you don't have to protect me anymore. I'm surprised you and Sara are still together, if you're that controlling with her…" She accused, although very unaware of what really was going on between the two of them at the time.

"Leave Sara and I out of this…Do you know why I worry about you? The things I see everyday, young women living alone…they all make me think about you here in the city. It just…it scares me sometimes to think something like that could ever happen to you."

"But it's like you can't trust me, like I have bad judgment!" She continued to argue. "Ian is a great guy, but you haven't even said one word to him and you hate him just because you didn't hand pick him for me."

It had been so long since any harsh words had been said between either of them, but Aggie had never really told him how much she hated the whole big brother act. He had just figured it was his job. Ever since the plane crash, he felt it was his duty to do what their father no longer could do, protect their little girl. He had never realized it until then.

"Fine then." He hung up his jacket and took a seat at the kitchen table. "Ian…get over here." He pushed out the chair opposite him with his foot and ordered him to have a seat.

It was the notorious interrogation. The one that Aggie had dealt with until Greg went away to college. Though on the occasions he was visiting from Stanford he wouldn't give up an opportunity to use it once again. Aggie, however, forgot that along with his promotion to level one, his job also required frequent interrogations. So what Ian was in for would be many times worse than the original.

The dark messy haired man did as the other lighter messy haired man had ordered and sat down rather uncomfortably on the wooden chair. Greg had considered the couch, though the kitchen table would be more fitting to keep the suspect on edge.

"So…what is your last name, _Ian_?" The name escaped his mouth harshly, as Greg had always found himself stating Hank's name as well, a few years prior.

"O'Reilly…why?"

"Oh…Irish are you? A drinker, are you?" Ian gave him a look. "I mean…not just because you're Irish…it's just a question. You aren't bringing my sister to any of those places are you?"

"Uh...well…a few…and she was the one who invited me…"

As soon as he stuttered out his answer, Greg was ready with the next one. "How old are you, boy? Twenty-eight, twenty-nine…what?"

"Actually…I'm only twenty-five…"

"Now you haven't done anything illegal, or have any such criminal record, have you? And you know, if you don't tell me the truth I can find out in a snap…and then you'll be in big trouble with me."

"No, I swear."

"And how long have you known her…"

"Three Years…about."

His questions kept coming out faster than those before. "How did you meet her?" He was hoping that he would mess up and it would give him some kind of excuse to hate the guy.

"She knocked on the door while I was unpacking and wanted to welcome me to the building, and we got talking…"

"How long ago did you break things off with your last girlfriend? You have heard about being 'on the rebound'. You're not using my sister that way are you?"

"A year ago, I think….and of course not!"

"Well then…who broke up with who…what didn't she like about you?"

"Well there must have been something because she, for some reason, she got with my best friend…so I got rid of her instead."

"Oooh…that sucks. Anyway, moving right along…have you 'gotten' with my sister? Huh?" He asked, using the same vague term that Ian had used just before."You better not lie to me!"

"No, Greg, no we haven't…" He wanted to add 'not yet' to the end of the answer, but Ian felt it would be very stupid of him to say in this situation.

"What do you like best about Aggie?"

"She is the most crazy, fun, beautiful woman, inside and out, that I've ever met."

"Now...her birthday was just last month, what did you do for her…or did you forget?"

"No I didn't forget. I got tickets for the two of us to go to the ballet and then I cooked her nice dinner here at home…"

"How much do you really know about her though? Where did she grow up?"

"San Gabriel, California---"

"What is her favorite book?"

"Anything by Agatha Christie…"

"What were her parents names?"

"Edith and Anton Sanders--"

"What food could potentially kill her in one bite?"

"Peanut butter."

"Now about you…what are you studying in college?"

"Art…actually I plan on becoming more of an art teacher, high sc---" Greg cut him off short.

"What was your grade average in high school?"

"A 3.9 I think…"

"Tell me…who was the youngest president in history?"

"What kind of question is that!"

"Just answer it!"

"Roosevelt…not JFK."

"Good, um…How often do you do your laundry? If you do at all?"

"At least once a week…depending."

"One last question…" Both Sara and Aggie watching the whole ordealheard a sigh of relief escape from Ian's mouth. "What are some of your favorite bands? What do you listen to?" Greg received an odd look once he announced the final question, as he was thinking it would be the hardest to answer, when in reality it was probably one of the easiest. "Trust me…you have a bad taste in music and that's three outs right there."

"A little bit of the Beatles…Oasis…Radiohead. There's a lot more though…"

Greg took a few minutes to ponder his verdict, well his motive was more to make the kid nervous over anything else. He appeared to be holding his breath and still continued to nibble on his, now near nonexistent, thumbnail.

"You know what…I think I might actually begin to warm up to you Ian, with time of course, but…you passed."

"Thanks Greggo." Aggie added in as he got up from the table. "I'm glad you think he's okay." She paused a bit before continuing with the real reason she was being especially nice. "You know how I'm not going to be dancing for a while yet, and therefore won't be getting a steady paycheck…"

"Yeah…why? Do you need rent money? I can loan you some, don't worry about it."

"No, it's not that…um Ian…Ian and I…we'll be splitting the rent for a little while…"

"You're moving in with him? Aggie!" Greg decided to say nothing further, actually he had no idea what he would say if he had wanted to in the first place. He just grabbed his jacket from behind the door and walked out, leaving the three left in the room with no clue where he was heading or what he might do.


	10. My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You

_Once again, we have come now to the end...a good end. _

Chapter Ten- My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You

Greg had to get away, get away from everything that was wrong with his life, all of which he had just discovered within the last hour or so. His sister was moving in with some guy that, though he passed the big test, Greg still wanted to hate so badsimply because he was moving in with Aggie. Then there was still Sara to think about. He wanted so bad to just forgive her, but after the further accusations he had made simply out of anger, he thought that Sara would be the one to doubt granting him forgiveness.

He had to escape from all of the mess, so he looked to the one place that managed to bring him some kind of solace when he lived there a few years ago. Back then he had found away up to the rooftop, through an "authorized only" door that he came across following the stairs up as far as the would go. No one else really knew about it except for Aggie, so he assumed he was safe there inhis new found silence…or so he thought.

He was lying flat on his back staring straight up into the black night sky searching for any remnants of the bright stars you could see so well out in the middle of the Las Vegas desert, but he found none what so ever. Why did all of this have to happen; his sister near crippled, moving in with some guy, and everything between Sara and himself was crumbling to pieces.

He closed his eyes momentarily in an attempt to get everything off his mind and think of something...anything remotely better. But when he opened his eyes again, it was Sara that he saw peering from above him.

"Did Aggie tell you where I was?" He asked with a sigh.

"I just know you too well Greg. Though you might insist on living life in the city, you always flock to the one place least like one. You prefer sitting on the banks of Lake Mead listening to the frogs and watching the sunrise…or dancing with me in your arms on the docks while you sing whisper soft Sinatra songs in my ear…I know you Greg, and I need you to know that I would never give all that up for anything in the world, whether you insist I'm still in love with Gil or not…" Sara stopped for a mere moment to sit down by Greg, hestill staring up at the hiding constellations. "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like I was just settling for you…and if I was, I was actually settling for something even better than what I wanted in the first place. I'll understand if you just want to break things off right now and go back to the way things were before. I don't know if I could do that- completely forget about how absolutely perfect we are together, but if that's what you---"

Her ramblings were cut off when Greg returned from his silent listening and out of the blue leaned toward Sara drawing his lips closer to hers in one smooth yet surprising motion. It was an action that would most normally remove all doubts in a person, but in this case, it only formed more questions for her. Moments later, he pulled away and opened his eyes to one very confused look upon Sara's face. He knew he had some explaining to do.

"I'm sorry Sara…for every incredibly stupid thing I said earlier…"

"Sorry, what!…If anyone is saying they're sorry it should be me!"

"Sara…at this point I don't really care what happened…it's over and done with, it can't be changed. And I want now more than ever for things to just go back to normal, perfect…just like we had before all this…_stuff _happened." He didn't want to say it again, only to forget about it completely.

"Well, I do know work will pretty much be hell for a while. Grissom isn't normally one to hold grudges, but for some reason I think he'll make an acceptation in this case."

"You hit the man!"

"Yeah, only after he tried to make a pass at me after I clearly said no! What would you have done?'

"If Grissom…uh, I definitely think I'd run away…fast."

"I wasn't looking for an actual answer…" She rolled her eyes at another one of his goofy antics, but it didn't bother her. In fact she was happy to hear it once again, it was the old Greg…back again.

"So...we're good…right?" He grinned, hoping for the right answer.

"I don't know Greg…" His face fell to a slight frown. "How can I tell you this today and just a few hours later you be completely okay with it? Normal couples can't do that Greg!"

"Kjær…haven't you realized, we're not normal." He laid back down on the hard cement with a loud sigh that some howsaid so much, and moments later she followed suit. "Just look at us…we couldn't be anymore different, but it works. Now just imagine if we were each with someone exactly like us…it would be awful. I learn from you, you learn from me. What one of us doesn't have the other one does. Sara…you complete me…"

Sara laughs at his last imitation, "Yeah…'and you had me at hello,' right?"

"No…I'm serious!" Sara smiled, and not just any old smile, bu the one that Greg loved so much, because it was strictly Sara's smile and no one else's. It wasn't perfect, but he didn't care. She had always had the small gap between her teeth and sometimes it went a little crooked depending on how she felt at the time, but because of that, he knew when ever he let him see that...he knew everything was going to be just fine.

"Greg…you've got to let her go…give her some space." She changed the subject after a long pause. "She's a big girl, you've done your job, now it's time to let her choose." She turned her head to speak directly at him, though it was only until he thought of something to say did he return his gaze from the dark skies and back into Sara's brown eyes.

"But I can't…you don't understand…"

"You're right I don't understand, I have no siblings younger or older, no family at all to worry about…you should be glad you do. If you don't stop…you'll drive the both of you crazy." She, with a quiet _ooouff_, pushed herself up from her previous seat. "Well…we're leaving tomorrow morning, so why don't you go talk to her before it's too late." She lent him a hand to aid him back on to his feet, hoping he would take her advice.

* * *

"Why does it seem as if all I really do anymore is help people pack up their stuff and move somewhere else? First Sara, now my sister…" Greg seemed to be more muttering to himself than to the other three in Ian's apartment. 

"Hey, you never know…you might be doing even more moving sometime soon." Sara was very much aware that she was the one to whom Ian was referring.

She set another laundry basket of Aggie's stuff on the couch with everything just carried over from next door. "I don't think so. I don't think I'm ready for the kind of 'commitment' quite yet. His dirty clothes on the bathroom floor waiting a half and hour for him to get out of the bathroom in the morning, and the glow in the dark star sheets can only be dealt with for a week at a time…trust me."

"Hey! I cleaned the bathroom, the kitchen…I even made spaghetti sauce from scratch!"

"Yes, I know Greg. I'm just saying not yet, okay." She rolled her eyes. He could make things so impossible for her to get things through his head.

"Now Ian…" He dropped the whole on going debate between he and Sara and moved on to the real situation at hand. "You know, I still don't know why I agreed with you moving in with my sister…so you better behave, because remember I still have vacation time on the books. I could make it back here in a matter of hour, and you have no idea what I might do."

"I'll be sure to remember that Mr. Sanders." Though he said with sarcasm. He knew Greg was only kidding in the first place, or at least he hoped he was.

Aggie quickly glanced down at her watch. "Hey, we better get going if we want to catch our flight."

* * *

"Can't we just tell Grissom our flight got cancelled and just wander around Chicago for a few days?" Greg's mind was wandering as well. He was currently in a metal man made contraption at thirty-thousand feet in the air. He hated airplanes, though he really did have a viable excuse as to his reasoning. Since he was eight he never went anywhere by plane, unless it was completely necessary for him to do so. And as he saw it now, flying back to Vegas to face his supervisor with whom he wasn't on the best terms, was not completely necessary. 

"I think that would actually make things even worse. I mean, I left him to work cases with only Sofia on shift for a week straight..."

"He'd be lost without us."

"Considering the circumstances...really?" She knew he was just kidding, most likely just talking to keep his mind busy, too busy to think about where he was.

"Oh yeah...he'd still be lost. He's probably gone crazy by now...trapped himself in his office and talking to his bugs like they were his shink."

"Greg...uh, I think he did that before we left." He grinned through his teeth as the plane passed though a small patch of turbulance that rattled the curved walls around him.

"Are you sure you're okay Greg?" She grazed her fingertips over his hand that at the time was grasping the arm rest to the point of having near white knuckles, thoughas he felt her do so he relaxed slightly.

"Yeah..." He nodded as Sara rested her head upon her shoulder and closed her eyesto attempt to get some sleep while she still could. "Never been better."

* * *

_"When you finally figure things out, it just might be too late…" Those words echoed throughout my mind ever since she first spoke them to me. She was right after all…I would give up everything, my job, my respect, anything for her. I didn't care anymore, just to be with her would be worth losing it all._

_But none of that mattered anymore. She was so close yet far enough away there was no way for be to bring her back to me. She'd moved on, it was as simple as that. It had been so many years, too many to wait, and she'd found someone else. She'd found someone who could make her happy, who could be all the things for her that I couldn't be._

_I should be happy…right? I should be happy that she has someone in her life, someone who makes her happy for the first time in so long, someone to be her diversion, her mental break from everythingthat might be going wrong in her life at the time. I should be happy that I don't need to worry anymore about her completely burning out, fading away, or going home after a tough day and looking for all the wrong answers in the bottom of a bottle. I should be happy for the fact I knew he would always be there to watch out for her. For the fact he was her safety net…my safety net. If I ever once wanted to hand pick someone to be with her, it would have been him…so, why couldn't I bring myself to feel so happy?

* * *

_

I thought of another third part of this (would be then) trilogy, having to do with Sara's backstory, but it might have to have a sad ending.We'll see, but it won't be up for a while because I haven't really done much with the idea yet.


End file.
